eBay was hosting a sudden spurt of Flyer Chief Berkshires for sale, and my guess was that the original owners had decided to upgrade to the Legacy version announced for this year and scheduled for delivery in December according to Lionel's shipping schedule. I suspect that there were a great many orders for the Legacy Berkshire. A finely detailed Legacy Berkshire for $500 MSRP was too good to be true, and apparently Lionel realized this some time ago; but, as with the mechanical reefer from a few years back, Lionel didn't think it important enough to notify customers who had ordered them. When the news for 2019 is a rerun of U33Cs reusing the original paint masks and changing only colors for a whopping $600 each, a $500 Legacy steam locomotive was too good a deal even if the orders were substantial.
Lionel should have had enough respect for the S scale community to either: 1) communicate that prices may have to be increased beyond what was advertised in their catalogue because of external influences or even a mistake in accounting, or 2) make some announcement that the production run may have to be cancelled because of lack of orders (if that were actually true). The worst thing they could have done was to announce before the expected delivery that they had cancelled the project months before, without notice. Lionel seems to make the worst choices.
